Cloud

Martian clouds could have an alien origin, according to a newly-published paper. The study suggests that mid-level clouds form above the Red Planet due to a phenomenon called "meteor smoke," which occurs when space debris is shredded upon entering the Martian atmosphere.

Most home robots aren’t particularly customizable. Now robotics startup Ohbot has unveiled its newest creation Picoh, a blank slate of a robot that can be programmed to do basically whatever you want it to do.

Aircraft have been known to mess with the clouds as they pass through or over them. A new study has found that planes could be boosting rainfall and snowfall by up to 10 times, and examined the microphysics behind it.

Hot on the heels of Google’s announcement last week of Project Stream, Microsoft has now revealed its own plans for a video game streaming service. Dubbed Project xCloud, the service would allow players to jump into an Xbox One game on basically any device – be it a TV, PC, or even a smartphone.

The unusually cold year of 1816 has been linked to one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history, and now we may know how. A new paper explains how electrified ash from the eruption could have “short-circuited” the Earth’s ionosphere and triggered the “Year Without A Summer.”

​Christiaan van Heijst is an airline pilot with over a decade's experience flying everything from small Turboprops to massive Boeing 747s. He's also a photographer able to capture spectacular images from his privileged perspective at 35,000 ft.

​An important arm of exoplanet research involves the study of the atmospheres that surround these distant worlds. The molecules they hold can reveal valuable insights into what kind conditions can be found there – along with ones that cannot.

With the once controversial idea of battling climate change through geoenginnering slowly gaining popularity, new research from the University of Exeter offers evidence that this untested approach could result in climate chaos.

The brains of most phones are a CPU and a GPU, but Huawei is looking to cram a third type of processor in there: what it calls a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The company’s new flagship chip, the Kirin 970, will include a dedicated AI processor, and offload some of the work to the cloud.

Even robots exploring other planets need to take some time to unwind and just watch the clouds for a while. The Curiosity rover, which just last week celebrated its fifth anniversary on the Red Planet, has now sent back some of the clearest photos yet taken of extraterrestrial clouds.

​​Brooklyn-based designer Richard Clarkson has been experimenting with artificial cloud designs for several years now. His latest invention is the Floating Cloud – a magnetically levitating ambient lamp that flickers through different colored LED modes in response to the sound in a room.​

​Geoengineering suggests we might be able to slow the effects of climate change by messing with the atmosphere. Two studies have examined the idea, one running computer simulations of techniques, while the other outlined a small-scale test to figure out how practical and safe the idea might be.